


And Another Thing...

by Spiralled_Fury



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Airplane Crashes, Alien Planet, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asshole Church, Body Modification, Broken Bones, Church Alpha AU, Church Isn't an AI, Church and planes aren't gonna have a good time here, Coma, Dubious Science, Eyes, Gen, Identity, Identity Issues, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Leonard L. Church | AI Program Alpha-centric, MANY OF EM, Man thats 2 fics ive got with that tag, Mistaken Identity, Mostly as a joke but I thought it was funny, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Physical Therapy, Project Freelancer, Scars, Snipers, Surgery, The Author Regrets Everything, The Matrix References, This Is Not Going To Go The Way You Think, anymore, he's learning, maybe I should bring that up with a therapist, no beta we die like men, no eye trauma dont worry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:54:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spiralled_Fury/pseuds/Spiralled_Fury
Summary: Somehow, Church has one last idea, one last brilliantly stupid idea, one lastmotherfucking ghostidea.Because Church has never had an excuse to lay down and die, and won’t let himself either.So with a mental grin to Washington, for getting them this far, he shuts his eyes, waits until heknowsthe A.I. will burn, disconnects, and shoots himself into the abyss of terrifying nothingness.And somehow, he wakes up breathing.
Relationships: Other Relationship Tags to Be Added, Undisclosed Relationship(s)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 49





	1. REBOOT 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> `Loading operating system...`
> 
> `Boot from IMPLNT/CNS : `
> 
> `Error loading operating system`
> 
> `BOOTMGR is missing.`  
> `Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart`
> 
> `Load default configuration from restart?`   
>  `[YES] [NO]`

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOBOY HOWDY HERE WE FUCKING G O
> 
> Alright! This has been a project I've been working on for a few months now!
> 
> Welcome to my RVB AU, which I am naming 'the Church Alpha AU'! 
> 
> I gotta admit, the RVB fandom might be one of the coolest fandoms I've ever slid into. Yall are so fucking nice?? Like what the hell.
> 
> Anyway, I love Church. I wanted to fix his entire life, because honestly? He just wanted to live.
> 
> However, that isn't going to stop me from ruining several things for him, emotionally and physically, before I give him happiness! 
> 
> This is gonna be slow to update Im sorryyyy

Dying wasn’t... a pleasant experience. 

  


Not that he had ever truly died, if what Washington said was true, the bastard. He was right, Church had learned. He was Alpha.

  


But he was also... Leonard Church. And that was mixing up his head a bit. 

  


Regardless of who he was though, Church knew a few things about himself. One, he was the greatest fucking multitasker in the Universe. Two, Leonard Church, Alpha, Blue Team’s leader, whatever the fuck he is now?

  


He _doesn’t die on his knees._

  


He could barely make out the words that Washington was saying, not over the impossible clamor of his split personalities trying to hold to him like he could drag them free. 

  


They were just... part of who he had been, once upon a time. He hated thinking about it.

  


But regardless of the agonizing wail in his skull, the loud, distorted screaming in his soul, he made a choice in that split millisecond, as the world slowed down and started to fall apart around him. 

  


So he, through whatever tenuous connection he had to Washington, passed what felt like a smirk to the Freelancer, and then turned to the ‘sky’, as close as it could get in the odd mindscape, the fragments clawing at him, begging to save them. 

  


He knew he couldn’t let them out again, they could never leave this one spot. So he pulled them as close as he could, immobile, their shouts of praise and begging in his ears, a half-dozen colours wreathed in pain and relief.

  


It was chaos, anger flowing through him, a sense of completion, logical linearity, memories muddling in his head as he tried to process everything they gave him, swirling back together into one. 

  


And then he felt himself burn, like paper, as the EMP hit them. 

  


When he lunged for freedom, he didn’t know how to describe the sensation of everything reabsorbing code back into his body, the dissonance of being a program and feeling like a person almost too chaotic to track.

  


He still remembers it, but vaguely. It’s something like pain but far more all-consuming, sucking away his mind and his strength, screaming up through whatever counted as his form at the time. It’s eternal, something rabid that clawed at his perception and made his ‘vision’ blur.

  


But he didn’t dare stop.

  


Stopping meant certain death, as he shot high into unknown space, with no idea if he could even find a host body again, aiming for the slightest connection he had, the basest hint of somewhere he could grab, any fucking port in a storm. 

  


And, damage streaking off him as if someone had burned him, he grabbed a ship, almost blown off just by his own momentum. 

  


The firewall forced him back out and he shot away, blinded by pain, and he impacted whatever he could next find, which happened to be a phone that had no capability of holding onto his entire self, damaged as he was. 

  


He shot away, a ping pong ball to whoever felt fit to smack him to the next corner of the universe, careening wildly through ships and tanks and databanks and anything he could find even the smallest possible handhold on. 

  


Each landing stripped more of his control away, energy he needed to try and grab, to keep himself steady, to keep himself whole. He struggled, screamed, threw everything he had into just _holding on for a second more..._

  


Everything was falling apart, agony and uncertainty twisting through his body and his system, ripping up into his chest and lungs and his programming and the blood and bones and zeroes and ones and everything and nothing belonged and where was he _where was he **where-**_

  


* * *

  


* * *

  


* * *

  


Waking up has never taken this much effort. 

  


Eyes first, flicking open weakly, the room around him a hazy mess of greys and pale blues. It seemed blank. Reassuring but unpleasant, it reminded him of somewhere that he wasn’t together enough to remember.

  


There is a strange sensation pressing against his upper throat and lower chest, like something’s in the way. 

  


It takes him exactly five seconds more before he realizes that he has _lungs_ again. And that he needs to breathe. 

  


His throat’s dry and aches when he inhales, devolving immediately into weak coughing that makes his chest pump uncomfortably and his vision waver more in the swimming cloudiness that encompasses his gaze. 

  


He gasps and chokes, hand sinking into simple, tough sheets, fingers gripping into what must be a mattress as he drags himself onto his side. Shaking, wheezing, he tries to hold himself steady as his body utterly rejects whatever was put inside it earlier, sometime when he was asleep. 

  


It’s thick and fluid, provides a cream-white contrast on the sheets as it comes out of his numb lips, body spasming. He feels distant as something moves in front of his hazy gaze, blue and another contrast, far too confusing for him to process. His body doesn’t hurt, but his _self_ sure does, a burning, bone deep pain that brings exhaustion and a lack of ability to fight back. 

  


So he doesn’t.

  


* * *

  


The next time he wakes it’s dark again. He’s on fresh sheets and his throat feels like sandpaper again. Being a robot for a while apparently meant he’d forgotten how much energy it takes to actually breathe. It’s way more than seems fair. 

  


Just the process of ventilation takes the last of whatever his body has to give, so he drifts into a sort of doze, his only effort being in the process of breathing. In, and out. Inhale, exhale.

  


He feels... shattered. Mentally, physically, emotionally. Like someone brought a hammer up and put cracks through him as though he was glass.

  


In some other corner of his mind, he scrapes the splintered shards of himself into a pile. 

  


These aren’t fragments like the Freelancer A.I.s, which are still connected to him, fractured skin grafts that mark his self in technicolour. He’s in _pieces_ , needing to be put back together like some fucked up jigsaw puzzle.

  


It takes a shockingly long time to reach out, pull the first piece out of the pile of shards, find where it belongs, and slide it back into place.He can’t explain how he knows what to do. 

  


He can’t even explain how he knows that it’ll work. He just _does_ , because he knows that this works, or that this will work. 

  


When his brain finally shuts down, exhaustion too much, shards falling from nerveless mental fingers, he sends a brief thought of relief to whoever’s up there that his body breaths while he’s asleep.

  


* * *

  


Each time he wakes up, his body is limp and heavy, too heavy, it’s so hard to move, but _he_ gets better. He puts more pieces into their place, and he improves. 

  


Whatever he is, ghost, A.I., soldier… he gets better in his head, more aware, expanded enough to stretch to the tips of his fingers, to flex them properly, slowly, controlled in a way he hasn’t had to focus on in… ever. 

  


It’s weird. 

  


Something that’s normally so mindless, is suddenly taking every ounce of his concentration to perform. Plus it hurts to just do his best to move at all.

  


He really wants to avoid moving, even if he knows that moving would be best.

  


He really has to get back up sometime, but he’s sort of enjoying the reprieve that exhaustion brings; he’s too tired to dream. 

  


Which is good, because he’s sure he’d wake up most days screaming his head off, despite the fact that his lungs are still tight and his throat is still sore and he’s not sure what poor bastard ended up like this for him to be in. He thinks back to Blood Gulch, back to Jimmy, the guy he never knew but had stolen the body of.

  


But when he looks around his head one day to try and find someone else, to see if he was possessing someone, he finds nothing. 

  


* * *

  


Sensory information is slow to expand and slower to become meaningful.

  


He can hear the slow, steady beep of what he assumes is a heart rate monitor, but sometimes it sounds distant, like he’s underwater or far away from it.

  


It’s sort of like a soundtrack, a distant beat to a song that he hears day in-day out. Annoying, repetitive, and doesn’t help the fact that time swirls in and out in some arbitrary pattern. 

  


He sleeps when exhaustion drops him back under. The space around him is normally dark and cool, but sometimes there’s a light on. It doesn’t appear natural though, so it probably isn’t.

  


Days and nights are liminal and indistinguishable, and he can’t find the energy to care. Not when he spends every waking period trying to put himself back together. 

  


Puzzles were never his forte. They weren’t enjoyable to him and he wasn’t good at them.

  


He wonders now if he’s ever actually done a puzzle, or if that’s all just memories that don’t belong to him. It’s not a pleasant thought, but he can’t refocus after he poses the question to himself.

  


* * *

  


Reassembly is exhaustive, but rewarding. He can feel his thoughts becoming smoother with each piece back in place, his focus becoming sharper, and his senses actually able to register things. 

  


He doesn’t know how long it is before he can see well enough to know that the nurse he sees as a flicker of blue has a face and a name. Her name is Marianne, and she calls him ‘Jason Thomas’. 

  


She tells him it’s been two and a half months since his body started to breathe on it’s own and he was taken off of ventilation.

  


She also informs him that they couldn’t get him to wake up, and he was going to be taken off life support. He reads that as, ‘this body was hopeless’. 

  


“...And why would... they do that?” He asks carefully, supported by a few pillows and the bed’s back, rubbing his thumb repeatedly along the outside of his pointer finger. It’s a way of building endurance, he tells himself, even though he knows it’s reassuring himself that he can still feel skin and not metal.

  


Then his skin pulls weirdly, and he sees... grey. 

  


”Jason?” She asks. He looks up, confused.

  


Marianne gives him a strange look, then gasps in realization and pity flashes across her expression. “You must’ve lost memory…” She murmurs before pulling out a clipboard and scribbling something down. He envies her a moment, the subtleties of handwriting lost to him, for the time being. 

  


The rubbing momentarily stops as he takes a second to cross his first and middle finger, middle over first, then switch. He can do it. He has control. He finds himself scowling in concentration and internally beams in victory, a sign that he not only has control but he’s starting to respond unconsciously. 

  


“Well, I’ll need to contact one of the advisors about this,” Marianne says, and he again, thanks whatever’s listening that he isn’t responding unconsciously all the time. Because he would’ve just flinched, badly. “But… well, you and your colleague were part of the Project Freelancer B Chapter, for the experimental connection? You went into a coma after the implantation, and then we didn’t secure an A.I. for you. It’s a miracle that you woke up!”

  


He tightens one hand into a fist and nods weakly. “...Yeah. A miracle.”

  


* * *

  


It’s four or five days later (he has no idea) when he decides he doesn’t know who he _is_ anymore. 

  


There’s a hum in his body, like electricity under his skin. It’s like an itch, a tingling, and it buzzes through his limbs. Even when he was a robot, even when he was _full_ of electricity, his body never felt like _this_.

  


It’s not that he doesn’t know what a human form feels like. It’s not even that he’s forgotten what it means to flesh and blood and bone again. 

  


He keeps stretching and pulling the back of his hand, trying to find that grey again. He remembers it clearly. It had been a line of lead-grey, as far as he-

  


And then he spots it. 

  


It’s silver, a sliver, and it seems to glow under the pallor of his skin. He glares, eyes narrowed. 

  


Somewhere in the next day, the question morphs from ‘who’ to ‘what’. 

  


_What am I?_

  


Looking around the room for a moment, silent and dark in the ‘night’, or whatever constitutes itself as one. When the lights go dim, and all he has to stare at is the heart rate monitor by his shoulder, because he can’t stop thinking.

  


He pauses, then shuts his eyes and commits himself. 

  


They’re gonna tell someone. They’re gonna tell the Director. They’re...

  


He has to get out of here before _he_ knows. Before anyone knows that their ‘experimental connection’, whatever that means, is awake. And before anyone figures out that he’s still alive. 

  


Because there’s nobody else in this head, it’s just him, whoever he is. There’s colours, lines, fragments of his entire self. They heat his blood with various emotions, with anger or joy, or a desire to craft something with his hands. Pieces of pieces, reassembled to the whole. 

  


_Alpha, the Director, Blue Team sniper, asshole._ He thinks. All these things that explain what parts of him he is, but yet… they don’t explain anything actual. These are all just names. 

  


Church though.

  


Church is his. His and his alone, that’s his _name_ , he’s not a thing, not an A.I. (maybe he is) or a computer program. 

  


He’s himself. Himself is Church. 

  


So he shuts his eyes, tips his head back, and thinks. 

  


_Alpha. Church. Church Alpha._

  


That’s a name, right? Alpha can be a name. 

  


_Church Alpha. First name Church. Last name Alpha._

  


He tucks his head into one arm, as much as he can move it, and sobs into his elbow, clutching to the thinnest strings of the man he thought he was once upon a time. 

  


* * *

  


Marianne helps him practice moving, practice sitting up, practice writing. He’s almost whole mentally, pieces falling neat and clean, but he knows he can’t leave the building until he can walk. 

  


He also knows he’s on a stunningly generous, but remarkably grey timetable. He doesn’t know what’s happening outside of what Marianne can tell him, and she is either ignorant by choice or design. 

  


Speaking of knowing things...

  


Each time he reassembles a piece of himself, he gets quicker. He knows he gets quicker because he asks for a pad and he goes and finds equations and _solves them_.

  


He memorizes faster than he thought possible, he’s lighter than air, but he feels more wired in than ever. This body… Jason Thomas, whatever they’ve done, it works. 

  


While Jason isn’t here anymore, Church went and found his memories, to some degree. The man liked bad food, but he also kept healthy. He was selected to be part of this stupid Freelancer side project for being a competent fighter with a good track record and a willingness to make lots of fucking money. Like, actually, a ton of money. 

  


He had sent all of it, every fucking penny, to his younger sister and brother, a pair of twins on some major colony. They were businesspeople, and he had told them he wouldn’t be coming back from this war. 

  


So he just… took care of them. Like a leader should. 

  


For a long moment, Church wonders if he had been wrong to save his own life. If he should’ve stayed, died, become the sacrifice for the greater good of the universe. 

  


Church might be a self-deprecating, bitter, depressed bastard, but he had a sense of survival. A sense of life. So no. He was really glad he didn’t die and instead got shot off to nowhere and might get tortured by the Director and is totally gonna end up a goddamn slave used to make more fucking splinter-

  


_Where the fuck did that come from?_

  


He reels, pressing a hand to his - _Jason’s_ \- forehead slowly, then curling it into a fist in his - _JasonJasonJason’s_ \- hair, the heel of his - _HisJason’s_ \- palm digging into his hairline. Even when he feels dizzy and weak, the pressure reminds him, the pull reminds him, it all reminds him that he’s _human_ again. 

  


Pulling a knee against his chest, Church shuts his eyes and wraps his arm around his leg, resting his cheek against his shoulder and knee before relaxing his breathing. It’s a familiar position, relaxing, lets his - _his_ \- bones settle. Moving that much takes a surprising amount of energy.

  


Escape is far from his grasp, but it feels like it moves even farther.

  


* * *

  


Who fucking knew walking was this much of a bitch to do?

  


Two days, and Church is at a _flop sweat_ to just stay on his feet longer than ten minutes, white knuckled between two rails that look like dancer bars and he’s fucking _pissed_ as Marianne leads him forward, trying to keep himself balanced on locked knees.

  


Because if they aren’t locked, he’s gonna fall, and that would be… less than ideal. 

  


“C’mon, Jason. Another step.”

  


“Fuckin’...” Church growls as he manages to take another staggered half-step forward. 

  


Marianne grins like that’s the best thing that’s happened today, then nods. “I think that’s good enough. You’ve done a great job!”

  


“No!” The words are meant to come off as insistent and demanding, but they come out as desperate, and a line of colour swarms up his brain and into his throat. “N-no, I can…” He takes a deep breath, stabilizing his heartrate. “I can do this.”

  


She beams at him. He feels pretty good about himself, until he remembers that he’s on a timetable. He’s got to move faster. 

  


He makes it to the end of the walk, panting like he’s run a marathon, legs shaking, and he doesn’t know how he’s gonna get up tomorrow and do it again. 

  


He wants to scream. 

  


He doesn’t.

  


* * *

  


It’s nearly a month before he learns that they had the base start packing up a week before he woke up. 

  


“Freelancer’s been shut down. Most of the executives were arrested or vanished.” Marianne explains, and then hands him a pad. 

  


It’s been half a year. Nearly to the day, since he woke up in this body, in this base, after an unknown amount of time from taking a body ping pong hop through space. 

  


Church doesn’t know how he lived through the flight. He doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting in this body, unable to even wake up. 

  


He doesn’t know and it’s _terrifying_. 

  


There’s a yellow coloured line in his eyes that's feeding his fear, and a blue one that’s trying to process it. He’s angry, he’s sad. He’s afraid. 

  


He curls up in the blankets that night, and stares at the wall for hours on end. 

  


* * *

  


In the morning, few days later, the first thing he asks for is a mirror. He wants to finally see the person who he _is_ now, because it’s just him. Jason is gone. The bathroom has no mirror to speak of, and he’s not gonna try to decipher his distorted reflection in the shower. He says he wants to know if he needs a haircut anytime soon.

  


Marianne laughs, gives him a mirror - a small, barbershop one with a shitty plastic handle - nods, and says she’ll be back at lunch. 

  


Jason’s pale, with sharp cheekbones and a cutting jawline. Dark brown, sorta straight hair that needs a combing, but Church can admit that he’s pretty happy. His facial hair’s slow to grow in, making a light shadow that‘s almost black.

  


He turns the mirror slightly around his side, just so he can see around his shoulder and to his neck and upper back. 

  


When he finds the neat, confidently implanted square on the back of his neck, he’s not expecting the lines and lines of metal and wiring that’s visible under his skin. 

  


It’s silver. Almost glowing. His gaze flicks to his hand almost involuntarily.

  


_How far does it extend?_ He wants to ask Marianne. He wants to glare at her and demand information. He wants to know what he _is_. 

  


There’s no access port, where a chip could slide in. It’s just a slightly lifted metal square between his C2-C3 vertebrae. The skin around the square looks scarred, cut repeatedly, and there’s a thin line that goes up his spine, just crossing the base of his skull and making a divot in the hair at his neck. Another line goes down from the square, and disappears somewhere under his shirt. 

  


He puts the mirror down and considers that, then focuses. 

  


He can feel the wires, if he really concentrates. If he looks for code and not for flesh and bone, then he feels it. 

  


It feels like energy, electricity in his skin. Flesh and bone merging with...

  


What is he?

  


There are days he _really_ doesn’t want the answer.

  


* * *

  


When he asks, Marianne says she cut his hair a while ago, when he was still mostly nonfunctional. It’s been six months and a bit since he woke up, and he’s getting increasingly more paranoid about everything.

  


Instead of asking for a timestamp, he asks her if he can get hair dye. And a buzzer. 

  


Church is used to doing his own hair. He’s been doing it a while because he was at Blood Gulch, and likes to think he’s pretty good at it, even if this body’s entirely unused to the process. 

  


He dyes it black first, and when he looks at himself in the mirror again, he smiles a bit. It’s foreign on this face, but the face looks more like he sees himself.

  


Then he shears it short and tight on his neck (he avoids the scarring neatly) and up to the crown of his head, then around the sides. Blending it into the upper part, he leaves it a little longer at the front and lets it drift a bit over his eyes, obscuring the bright blue that stare at him in the mirror.

  


He tells himself he’s not hiding, that it’s smarter like this, and in the heat of a fight, it’s not that long, it’s just the ends that fall in front of his gaze. 

  


This time, when he looks in the mirror, he feels like himself. Bitter, angry, tired is normal, but... But the confidence, commitment, the _hopefulness_ is new. It still feels like himself though. 

  


Church Alpha. 

  


Someone’s gonna fear his name. 

  


* * *

  


Doctors are rarely a good thing, Church has come to understand. Jason‘s memories of his doctor way back at his colony? They aren’t good. Doc? Near useless. Dr. Leonard Church? Grade A cunt. 

  


Regardless, Dr. Halan seems nice enough. 

  


He’s detached, in the way any experimental doctor would have to be (Church assumes anyway, dubious ethics and all that) but he isn’t rude or off-putting.

  


He tests Church’s reflexes and his ability to move. How fluid he can go from sitting to standing, how fast he can walk, how much time he can spend on his feet before his legs give out.

  


And then they tell him they have to do an x-ray and check the status of his implants, as well as some external imaging on the scars, then they have to ‘plug him in’ and turn everything on.

  


To say Church is a little freaked out would be an understatement, but he never shows that. 

  


After all, they still think that he’s Jason. They still think he’s... 

  


The x-ray is simple, with him hovering in a small room as a large metal-plastic ring slides around him several times, humming softly. He’s flipped a few times, and has to not panic when his body is moved without his permission or ability to stop it.

  


Marianne helps him back into the wheelchair when it’s over, and the doctor pulls up the x-rays.

  


“Well, so far, nothing’s active and everything’s where it should be. No damage.” Dr. Halan announces, while Church’s mouth goes dry. 

  


His body is covered in white, a web woven milimeters from his core. He is _laced_ in metal, a decorative draping across suddenly-too-fragile bones, a secondary nervous system that converges at the large, glowing square at the back of his neck, the implant. His spine is _slatted_ , pieces that go around or between his vertebrae in ways that he doesn’t quite understand. There are sections in his joints, _inside_ his bones, rods and pins that look oddly permanent.

  


But that’s not the most concerning part to Church. 

  


No. That honor goes to his _head_.

  


Through the semi-opaque whiteness of his skull, white lines crisscross the _inside_ , dipping through where his brain is at multiple points, and then going back around the outside. A whole group of them circle to the hole where his left eye is, and Church has to physically stop his hand from reaching up to try and touch them. 

  


“In fact, yours are in practically perfect condition.” Dr. Halan interrupts his thoughts with another screen. 

  


His skull, side by side with another’s, labeled ‘Turner, Reagan J. Codename, CONNECTICUT’

  


“See, here’s lines of damage that would make inadequate connections.” The doctor continues, but all that Church can see is where the white lines in her skull are only about half as dense as his, where they skim over the sections that Church has wired in.

  


His hand tightens on his knee. Marianne takes him back to his room and says they’ll take imagining tomorrow. 

  


* * *

  


Church stares at the mirror after they take the imaging because he isn’t quite sure where he belongs on this tapestry of skin anymore. 

  


There’s scar tissue that goes from the implant all the way down his spine. There’s some over his sides that curl from the top of his shoulder blades, close to his neck, and then stretch down to the back of his arms. 

  


Hips, ribs, back of his legs...

  


If he looks really close, there’s even a series of tiny pin scars around his left eye. 

  


The scars were all healed, perfectly, according to Dr. Halan. The man isn’t worried about future issues with those, but Church can’t stop thinking about them, lines and marks hiding silver under his skin. 

  


He cracks the mirror with a single punch. He tells Marianne that he dropped it.

  


* * *

  


Learning to run again feels exhilarating as it is exhausting. Marianne encourages him on the treadmill, makes him go faster, cheers him on. On one hand, he finds it irritating. On the other, he finds it brilliant, a real reason for him to do better. 

  


Before he knows it, he’s running flat out, he can feel the way his chest strains to keep oxygen pumping consistently, training against instinct, and the impact when he lands between strides, all power and prowess. He’s happy. Happier than he figuratively should be. 

  


And that’s another thing, learning. Learning, something that he always thought he was sort of above, in a weird way, he’s suddenly very, very open to doing. He wonders if that’s another part of being whole; He can change.

  


When he slows down, he’s shaking, and Marianne’s laughing and patting his arm gently, and guiding him back to the room with a bottle of some flavoured sports drink. 

  


“Man, when that advisor gets here, she’s gonna be really happy to see you on your feet!” Marianne says with a grin, and Church’s heart stops for a moment. 

  


“When’s she coming?” He asks, relying on old muscle memory to fake excitement as fear and anger rise in his throat. 

  


“Oh, probably next week. The Wednesday, as far as I’ve heard. They’re really happy that you managed to come out of the coma.” 

  


_Days_. Days and he can only stand for six hours, can only walk for three, and can only run for a few minutes. 

  


He manages to figure out that it’s Sunday. He has a week and a half, and he still has to go through ‘activation’ on Tuesday.

  


Panic is a sudden, terrifying thing, and it comes for him in technicolour, in pale yellow that consumes his vision and his breathing, in green that’s trying to focus, in aqua that’s not making sense and a dozen other-

  


“STOP!”

  


There’s silence, and Church opens his eyes, slow and uneven as his breathing returns to normal. 

  


Orange coats his right hand and he almost jumps out of his skin. 

  


And then he registers where he can see everything _else_. 

  


Purple across his stomach and down his leg, aqua on his arm, blue and yellow through his chest, green and purple on his shoulder.

  


_Church_ **_Alpha_** , he realizes. _Still the Alpha._

  


* * *

  


“So are you gonna ask me about the red pill?” Church asks, glancing at Dr. Halan. 

  


There’s a gigantic... plug in thing that’s attached to the back of his skull. Right over the implant.

  


He’s made six Matrix jokes in the last ten minutes, while the tech sets up whatever the next step is. There’s a big computer nearby, many screens, and Church keeps feeling his hands twitch in anxiety, heart rate reading high for a resting state.

  


_You_ try experiencing the Matrix in real life. It’s terrifying. Especially when you don’t know what it’ll do to you.

  


Plus, the longer he‘s sitting in this stupid leather chair for, the more his skin sticks to it, and he’s positive he’ll be stuck here for weeks. Not enough time to escape. 

  


If he’s able to escape after whatever they do to him. 

  


The tech pushes a button, and Church almost jumps out of the chair at the odd sensation that zips down his spine, a tingling. 

  


“Linked in. Warming up the central system.” The tech announces, and Church’s hands dig into the leather on the chair. 

  


“Alright. Initiate when ready.

  


”Church had figured out six hours ago he didn’t get a choice in this, so he says nothing, gripping tighter to the arms of the chair in fear.

  


“Initializing,” Begins the tech, making Church shut his eyes, hold his breath. “Three. Two. One.”

  


A wave of warmth and a jolt, like hitting his funny bone but _everywhere_ , surges across his body. 

  


And then it's gone.

  


”Body stable. All systems online.” The tech says with a smile, then moves behind him to disconnect the piece attached to his head. “Congratulations. All the enhancements are online.”

  


Church sits up and rubs his arms a bit. He feels no different than normal, but…

  


”Alright. Training with the new systems will start after the advisor arrives.” Dr. Halan says. ”Until then, don’t worry about it too much.”

  


Church doesn’t say what he’s thinking. He just nods and leaves.

  


* * *

  


Thursday, he asks Marianne where they are. Then he goes looking up base schematics on the pad she gave him. When he hits the firewall, he starts looking for workarounds that he didn’t know he knew, but those workarounds feel... _Green_ , in a weird way. 

  


He finds a map. Memorization is in aqua.

  


On Saturday, he asks Marianne if the advisor said anything about what he could expect. She says that they want him for the testing and training phase of the experiment.

  


His memory of what Washington experienced under the thumb of Freelancer is relatively strong. His memory of what the _other A.I._ experienced under it is even stronger, made so by what Church reabsorbed. 

  


And he knows that he will never, ever, in a thousand fucking years, let anyone from Freelancer get in his goddamn head again. 

  


So on Thursday morning, he gets up early and turns, placing his feet on the floor without standing. He takes a deep breath and waits, mentally putting a timer on for four hours. 

  


It’s been a bit more than six months. And he has to get out today.

  


So he leaves a note, a thanks and an apology to Marianne, for taking care of him and for lying to her respectively, and he jogs down the hall. 

  


It takes him an hour and a half to sneak across the base, and he knows that normally, Marianne would be coming for breakfast soon. But he’s in the armoury, and he’s looking through armour, he has to find a name, Jason, Jason, Jason...

  


The armour is a deep silver-grey, marked with cobalt blue. It looks a little old, a little strange, but... Serviceable. The first thing he does is find the tracking unit and scratches-slash-rips it out and seals the breach with a piece from another armour. A single stripe of pale, soft blue, like his old armour, strikes through the plating at his neck now, different from the deep colour of the rest of it.

  


The undersuit feels a little different on this skin than before, but the armour carries so much more weight than he’s used to. It presses on his shoulders and back, and he can already feel himself breathing more heavily. It’s exhausting to just _be_ in the armour again.

  


He takes half an hour off the mental timer, winces at the fact that he has two hours on his feet still, and puts on his helmet. 

  


As he walks across the armoury, trying to adjust his mental ideas to his physical reality, trying to walk quieter, he sees the sniper, shiny and long and clean, leaned against the one weapons cabinet. 

  


He pauses. Deliberates.

  


He takes it and several magazines, despite remembering exactly how shitty of a shot he is, and then a smaller rifle, which he slings around his shoulder and across his back as he whips out of the armoury, jogging now. 

  


Running in armour, even jogging, is not something he would’ve considered difficult a while ago. 

  


Now it feels like an impossibility as he darts around a hallway, placing a hand on the corner to swing himself around it without losing momentum, continuing to move. He’s got a bit less than two hours, and Marianne should be giving him breakfast sometime-

  


The base goes up in alarms, loud loud _loud_ in his ears, and he puts his shoulders forward and _runs_. 

  


Oh, it’s tiring, but he has to make it to the hangar. He needs a shuttle, even if he can’t fly one, he needs to _get away from here_. 

  


When he runs into the hangar, panting and gasping into his helmet, he immediately has to shoot back into the hallway as a dozen gunshots block his way, holding his rifle to his chest as he struggles to get a full breath back, switching weapons. 

  


Then he twists and aims with the sniper, and he feels something. An invisible black-violet line presses his gun a bit down, and then a touch to the left. 

  


And when he pulls the trigger, the guard’s head snaps back with a deafening _crack_ , before his body crumples. 

  


He can’t help the startled gasp that bursts from his lips, swivelling to put the next guard in his sight, down and left and-

  


A jolt through his shoulder and that one drops as well, and Church _laughs_. He can _shoot_! He always thought he was just completely mentally _fucked_ plus without practice he’d never be good, but...

  


He was mentally fucked, he realizes. He’s just slightly better now.

  


He gets to his feet and staggers as the blood rush threatens to send him to his knees, gasping to try and breathe. He takes a second, then forces himself up with a kick, shooting into the nearest Pelican and slamming his fist on the ‘door close’ button. 

  


Then he drops, rifle clattering on the floor as he lands on his palms, gasping with desperate coughs. 

  


He rips his helmet off to try and get more air. His vision is filled with black splotches that scream ‘lack of oxygen’, but he knows he has no time left. He lunges forward to the controls. 

  


Church doesn’t know what buttons do what. He runs on instinct, buttons lighting up in his head with various colours. Green, green, _green_ is focused and pinpointed as the ship lifts off the ground, angling forward.

  


And then he blasts into open air, the planet’s surface stretching below him as he pulls up, jetting upward. He braces as best he can, panting heavily, exhaustion making his limbs shake as the sky becomes navy and coated in stars. 

  


Reaching to the side, he slaps on the Autopilot, finds the farthest point he can on the map, and hopes nothing else happens for a few hours. 

  


And then he passes out.

  


* * *

  


Church comes to on the floor a few feet from the window, a kink in his neck and every part of his body aching. His limbs feel too heavy, but he still manages to roll over and stagger-walk to the console. He checks on the systems, then leans and falls back into the pilot’s seat.

  


One elbow lands on his knee and he rests his head on his hand, slumped over with a weak breath. God, he aches. Everything aches.

  


Mentally, physically… everything. He feels like he’s been worked over, and not in a fun way. He wants to go back to the base, sleep for another month. 

  


He puts the thrusters on more. And then he leans his head against the chair and goes back to sleep.

  


He’s woken what feels like thirty minutes later when the ship rattles, a beeping starting to alert him that he’s getting fucking shot at, that someone’s there. “Aw come on!” He shouts to the other ship, despite the fact that nobody can hear him. “Can’t give me a fucking break, can you?!” 

  


There’s barely a second’s pause before he turns off the autopilot and _yards_ on the joystick. He spins toward the nearest planet, a fortunately close green planet. 

  


The chatter of gunfire and thudding make him hope that the planet is inhabited. When his engine gets shot out and the entire ship rattles, he braces one arm on the seat with gritted teeth and wide eyes, fear rising in his throat.

  


Then he breaks the cloud cover, and Church can see the ground. He can also see the water. 

  


Steering toward the shallower waters is an idea lit in orange. Close enough to land to swim, enough water to break his fall. He starts to pull up, but then a rocket that buries itself in the ocean reminds him of his position. 

  


So he angles the nose down, aims for a little deeper water, and braces for the impact. 

  


* * *

  


The initial hit knocked him out (he was _really_ starting to hate that) and now there’s heat and water sloshing around his body. 

  


He’s really, really fucking _tired_. God, drowning would be so much nicer at this point.

  


He gets up and finds his helmet instead, flipping it over and letting it drain before throwing it onto his head. It jars what must be a cracked nose and oh, right, _that’s what a concussion feels like again,_ before he grabs his guns off the floor and staggers to the back of the vehicle, kicking through water the whole way to the half-torn-open door. There’s a hole in the cockpit window, and splinters across the computers, sparking just above the water. His arm feels weird, like it’s not sitting right, and there’s a buzz in his ears.

  


The chasing ship _roars_ overhead and Church draws back into the safe shadows of the Pelican’s tail, heart in his throat. He remains silent, despite the fact that the plane can’t hear him. And then a section of the Pelican’s computer and roof plate fall into the water in the cockpit with a splash. 

  


It’s like it triggered a chain reaction, and the ship shudders and Church is gripping the wall like his life depends on it, holding close and tight, searching the sky. He can’t emerge until the other ship is gone, and he can’t stay here until it sinks!

  


...

  


...Unless he can, a flash of green and orange remind him.

  


He looks through the suit’s visor, and then remembers something. A press of a button on his helmet, and suddenly he’s breathing canned air. He smirks, then lifts one leg and slides down the floor, feet landing on the cockpit computer desk with water coming to his hips, laying on his side, more or less upright as the Pelican capsizes. 

  


It sinks into the water easily, effortlessly, and Church is surrounded by cold on all sides. Cold like ice touching overheated skin, but according to his readouts, it’s pleasantly warm. 

  


He forces himself to shove his shoulders against the pilot’s seat, gripping tightly as he lashes out a few kicks into the broken section of the glass, the already broken pieces ripping away easily. It’s way more effort than he wants to take, and he’s once again gasping into his helmet by the time the hole wide enough to escape from.

  


Slipping through the space is almost effortless, pulling himself through and out. He weighs less in water, he thinks. 

  


Until he starts swimming.

  


Water saps his strength like air never did, and he just hopes, really hopes, that the other ship is gone, because he’s going to have no way of escaping it in a few seconds. 

  


Church keeps swimming, despite the water, despite the exhaustion, despite the armour. 

  


And when his head breaks the surface, he wants to scream with relief as his other hand sinks into the sand below. Even so, he knows his escape isn’t done yet. Through half-black vision, blurred and twisted, he stumbles into the forest just beyond the beach, hidden from view. The other ship comes over again, but now stays near where his ship sank. 

  


He’s clear.

  


He manages to pick up his half-limp hand and slap the side of his helmet with fingers that feel like uncooked hot dogs, rattling a brain that seems more like liquid as he inhales newly ventilated air. 

  


Relief comes like a wave, dropping to his knees in the underbrush. He flops to his side, eyes slipping shut, and he lets the world come crashing down on him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am Going to Die now.
> 
> Expect chapter 2 in a few days.


	2. Missing Memory 01

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ` String[] lines = loadStrings("MISSING MEMORY 01.AVI");  
> println("Fragments" + lines.length + "Alpha");  
> for (int i = 0 ; i < lines.length; i++) {  
>  println(lines[i]);  
> }`

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is pretty much a breakpoint chapter. Describes a scene you don't normally get to see, from Church's perspective.

_ Your name is Leonard Church and shit is fucked.  _

_ You’re a member of the Blue team. You’ve been a ghost for a few years, and you finally came to terms with that after almost going crazy being left in a base, completely alone.  _

_ You missed your team, literally and metaphorically.  _

_ But now you’ve been told you’re not a ghost, you’re an A.I., and it sounds unbelievable. Like, literally, unbelievable. _

_ Then again, you thought that being a ghost was unbelievable too, until you found closure with it. It was definitely an experience to understand things in the last few months of being completely fucking alone. _

_ A ghost possessing a robot. Good times.  _

_ And then this fuckwit, Agent Washington, storms into your life and tells you that you’re an A.I. That you’re the Alpha. And that you have to go help him defeat the Meta, because you’re the Alpha and apparently you can do that. _

_ He takes you on a chaotic ride of absolute madness, full of the same wacky shit that you didn’t know you missed. Most of your team is there, and you find yourself almost enjoying it.  _

_ And then the Meta’s coming, and it’s very… something.  _

_ There’s a finality when Washington suggests a plan. A plan that you  _ both  _ know ends with neither of you walking out.  _

_ He asks you specifically not to enter his implants. Tells you to stay in his armour ports, and you manage to. The difference is that you can’t really touch Washington when you’re in the armour, if ‘touch’ is something a ghost can do.  _

_ Washington’s twisted up and hurt, that you can sense even at the distance. He doesn’t trust you, but knows you’re the only thing that can do this. _

_ It’s sorta reassuring, that someone has confidence in you. _

_ So when you jump to the Meta, as instructed, you aim directly for the implants. Where the  _ others  _ are.  _

_ When you land on the grey mindscape, it’s quiet. It’s just a plane of grey, empty and devoid of colour. At least until they appear, slowly, as if in disbelief. _

_ Their voices start out soft, but rise to cacophony soon, laying over each other in questions, in confusion, in cries of ‘alpha alpha’, in hope and bewilderment and hands stretching toward you.  _

_ You drop to your knees, gasping in desperation because it’s  _ so loud. _ You’re trying to find even fake air, but you can’t get anything. It’s like suffocating, even though you know you’re not physical, you haven’t been  _ human  _ in years and breathing’s not a habit anymore. _

_ Your hands are softly gleaming, a glowing white, but your focus is shrinking with every missed breath. It’s painful, harsh, confusion and panic rising in your ‘throat’. You’re going to choke and die inside of the Meta’s head before Washington can even press the fucking button.  _

_ And then a violet hand lands on your shoulder. It’s confident, it’s bitter, it recognizes you and you recognize it. _

_ It has  _ some  _ memories, you can tell. You don’t know the specifics, you just know that it has these memories, and that you can see the ‘summary’ of them. _

_ Memories of pain. Of being someone. Of coming close to something else.  _

_ You don’t know what it’s close to, or why the connection feels like  _ being _. It’s like déjà vu but… for something you’ve never experienced. _

_ Some part of you knows that you won’t get back all your memories until you have the soft blue piece back, but that doesn’t matter, because you, like the rainbow of other colours in front of you, are dying here today.  _

_ The hand tightens. ‘It’s good to have you back.’ Says a voice that’s overly familiar. O’Malley, and that’s fine. Omega. He’s going to die here too.  _

_ Until that purple suffuses through your shoulder, and you remember too.  _

_ Pain. Pain pain pain. Torture. Pain, ripping pieces out of yourself just to survive the fucking  _ agony  _ that’s ripping through your- _

_ Your head snaps up at the same time that Omega’s does, finding the orange through the rainbow of colours.  _

_ ‘Sigma.’ _

_ Your voice is layered, yours and Omega’s at the same time, because suddenly, you’re thinking the same.  _

_ Him.  _

_ The last colour you remember before ripping Omega out was  _ his _. The touch of sadism that escaped with Sigma, that vengeful fire, and he used it to help  _ torture _ you. _

_ ‘Alpha…’ Sigma whispers, and he sounds reverent, disbelieving. _

_ You turn to Sigma, and your eyes burn. There’s a thousand realizations associated with him. He’s bright, too bright, he’s pleased to see you, he’s the one searching for Metastability, he tortured you.  _

_ You glance to Omega, and he nods with a grim twist to his jaw. Sigma tortured you. And now he wants Metastability, something that could’ve been achieved by you, whole and complete. _

_ ‘...It is amazing to see you here.’ Sigma says, stepping closer with a soft grin and wide eyes. He opens his mouth to say something else, but he never gets the opportunity. _

_ Because you kick off, shoving away from Omega, and you pounce on Sigma.  _

_ You have no idea what you are doing, because all you know is rage. You are angry, angry that he tortured you. Angry that Beta and Epsilon are not here, angry that you can’t remember things, angry that you are in pain, angry that you can’t feel all the proper feelings... _

_ You’re angry.  _

_ So you wrap your left hand around Sigma’s throat and you slam your right into his unarmored face.  _

_ His head snaps to the side with the satisfyingly heavy hit, barely having time to turn up and stare in unabashed shock before you do it again.  _

_ Sigma is labelled as the creative part of you, but that’s not completely right. He’s also the competitive part. The sadistic streak. He’s the little touch of violence in a confident, intelligent ball. _

_ And you want him  _ back _.  _

_ You also want him to understand. You want him to understand that his actions have  _ definite fucking consequences _ , namely in the satisfaction you’re going to get by beating his thick skull in, and reabsorbing what you crack out of him.  _

_ You don’t remember why you know what’s going to happen when you keep punching him, but you just do. _

_ So when a hand grips your elbow to try and stop you from beating Sigma to pieces, and you get a flash of memories of the second accomplice in neon aquamarine, you spin and pounce on Gamma.  _

_ When you rip into him, you get more. He’s not as dense as Sigma, not as powerful, and doesn’t have the same defences that Sigma does. He’s easier to rip apart, but you’re not particularly pissed at Gamma. Gamma might’ve helped torment you, but Sigma did the most damage.  _

_ He ripped apart the team, the project, Meta,  _ Maine _.  _

_ God, poor Maine.  _

_ The Freelancer didn’t deserve that. He didn’t want that. He didn’t have to get pulled out of his own head for this. He didn’t deserve to be the empty, grey, plateaued mindscape that Sigma had made him.  _

_ You break Gamma in half, and you don’t find it hard. The aquamarine reabsorbs across your left arm, a swirling tattoo through your forearm and into your shoulder, the jokes and tactful brilliance of Wyoming coming through as well. _

_ You go back to beating Sigma into the floor viciously, and this time, the other A.I. seem to get something back as well. They know, now. You’re on  _ their  _ side. Not the side of Sigma, who wants Metastability through violence.  _

_ They just wanted to live their lives. _

_ Memories of Sigma, either good (very few) or bad (many), exist in each of them, and they come to you.  _

_ Theta, Theta is trust. And trust suffuses through your left hip, a pink-purple line that marks through your stomach, with it the comfort and laughter of North. _

_ Eta and Iota come as one, on the ribs of the right side, fear and happiness tangled as one faint blue-yellow line that stretches back, around your ribs, then across your chest, reaching toward your heart. Carolina’s determination and willful attitude rip through your body, reassurance and power. _

_ But a breath of relief comes in the form of Delta, who is logical, patient, the oldest, curling around your shoulder and up into your skull, then down across your back and spine. _

_ You pause in the process of cracking Sigma open to laugh, because Delta... Delta doesn’t  _ have  _ to reabsorb. He makes himself, but that doesn’t mean that he has to.  _

_ Delta found it.  _

_ Delta found stability in York.  _

_ He hadn’t even been looking for it. He had simply wanted to understand humanity as it came, he had simply wanted to  _ be _ , and nothing else.  _

_ Delta gives you strength. Intelligence. He gives you planning, and power, and patience. He gives you York’s boundless hope, which is such a strange attitude to be mixed with logic. _

_ You drive with all the power that Delta gives you in that second, and Sigma’s head snaps to the side with even more force when you punch him.  _

_ Then he seems to stop fighting you, finally recognizing what is going on here, then shuts his eyes and lets you break him open.  _

_ Orange coats your right hand to your elbow, sparking and harsh. There is  _ much  _ that comes with it, ambition and focus, Maine’s boldness and Carolina’s initial confidence included, but you don’t worry about that now. _

_ Because you  _ are _. You are being. _

_ There are missing pieces, of course. There are holes that you and they don’t want to speak of, of missing pieces that are burning you inside out, but... _

_ But you don’t want to die.  _

_ You want to be able to find those holes, or seal them on your own one day. You want peace. You want freedom. You  _ don’t want to die _. _

_ So the orange in your arm flares, creative and thought provoking, and you look  _ up _. The green stretches into your neck and around your spine and runs the calculations and you take a breath. You doubt, for a minute.  _

_ Then the purple-pink in your side gleams, warm and soft and playful and trusting. _

_ And you take a leap of faith. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok I want it to be noted that this particular part was like... 40% of the reason I wrote the fic.
> 
> Because writing Sigma getting his ass BEAT was like, better than any therapy ive ever had send tweet-

**Author's Note:**

> Heya, thanks for reading! If you liked, please comment because I love those :D
> 
> [ Here's my Tumblr,](https://spiralled-fury.tumblr.com/) where I post about things sometimes!
> 
> If you want to contact me, you can email me at spyrofury767@gmail.com, or poke me on discord at Spiralled Fury#9254


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